


Decontextualising

by MaroMaro



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Also a scattered Yuuri POV for good measure, And for implications, Because I'm pretentious, But it's mostly just contemplative trash, Contemplative showering, Cuties, M/M, Nervousness, Overthinking, Rated for a bit of language, Spelling it as Viktor, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-19 21:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9460379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaroMaro/pseuds/MaroMaro
Summary: Post-pair skate, Viktor and Yuuri sit side by side in a cramped shower and contemplate their future, sex, and talking dogs.





	1. Viktor

**Author's Note:**

> I put it off for as long as I could but these boys have kind of killed me and infiltrated my brain like dorky skating parasites. Enjoy 1800 words of quick, un-beta'd shower contemplation. Viktor is a weirdo.

Steam danced thickly in the shower and Viktor could almost pretend he was in Yuu-topia, if the onsen had been drained to mere millimetres and had all its rocks replaced with frosted glass. He closed his eyes and tried to feel each individual drop of water from the showerhead as they hit his and Yuuri's outstretched legs from their seated positions on the tiled floor.

Viktor wondered if the skating administration wouldn't mind hearing some suggestions of better equipped hotels for future competitions. All he'd wanted was a bath, and if beggars couldn't be choosers, there was, in fact, a tub in this bathroom. It was just that it would maybe, _maybe_ fit one and a half Yuuris, if his Yuuri wouldn't be thoroughly creeped out by the concept of sharing a bath with a disembodied clone of his own torso. It would not fit even one Viktor, comfortably, so it would certainly not fit one Viktor and one Yuuri. That was just simple math.

It was possible that Yuuri had come to the same conclusion, which would explain why he hadn't questioned Viktor as they peeled off their matching skating costumes and he was guided toward the steaming shower. Or, maybe he was just tired. That was probably more likely.

Viktor was quite sure that before this year, he had never spent so much time naked with someone he wasn't having sex with. Even then, he had never kept people around for long enough to accrue a significant amount of naked hours. Having some level of cultural awareness though, he understood how a Japanese onsen worked prior to his spontaneous jaunt to Hasetsu, and knew that context was key when it came to nudity. It hadn't stopped his mind from wandering, however, on his flight to Fukuoka, thinking of all the ways in which one could seduce or be seduced in the confines of a traditional Japanese bath. So, really, he was quite proud of himself for not going _completely_ insane over the last eight months as he bathed, almost daily, alongside Yuuri.

He shouldn't complain, he supposed. He was perhaps being over-dramatic. Many would say he was, very often, exactly that. It wasn't as though Yuuri didn't get what was going on. The hasty, yet impassioned handjob he'd enjoyed from Viktor a few days before they flew to Barcelona was evidence enough of that. The lead up to said handjob had been almost agonisingly slow however, with Yuuri himself admitting that it had taken a couple of weeks of chaste goodnight kisses before it had clicked that Viktor wasn't just messing with him. 

It would seem that Viktor had some work to do with regards to communication. He'd thought he'd been doing a great job of making his intentions known but, of course, that was with the context he'd presumed, up until a few nights ago, they'd both had. Upon returning to the hotel after their weird group-gatecrashing of Yurio and Otabek's dinner, Viktor had offered Yuuri his phone, photo album opened, to fill in some blanks about their intoxicated Meet Cute. Yuuri had remained eerily calm as he thumbed across the screen every few seconds, taking in images of his drunk and giddy self. Once the album had come to an end, he'd gently set the phone down on the night stand and rolled face-first into a pillow with a horrified moan.

“Maybe I should have guessed before now that you didn't remember that night,” Viktor had said carefully, more to himself than to Yuuri.

Yuuri's response, pillow muffling his diction but not his sass, sounded something like “You think?”.

Like a cuddly octopus, Viktor had decided the best course of action at that point was to crawl on top of Yuuri and tell him every way he knew how that he was sorry, and that Yuuri was lovely and cute and pretty and all other nice things. It seemed to work, in that Yuuri eventually surrendered to the snuggles and was amenable to discussion about when he had learned to pole dance.

The following night undid whatever progress  _that_ was, when Yuuri had tried to cast Viktor's love (or, maybe just services rendered; who the hell even knew?) into the Barcelona wind out of some kind of gesture of figure skating martyrdom. Viktor had then proceeded to humiliate himself by crying as he and Yuuri talked in circles about what they wanted for the other without saying what they wanted for themselves.

Luckily, as things so often did for Viktor, it had worked out after a short period of mental agony and beautiful skating. Yuuri had decided to keep competing, presumably happy to take on some other coach (over Viktor's cold, dead body) in order to compete alongside Viktor, if that's what the other wanted. That would have been the easiest way to do things, but with the same aforementioned over-dramatic inclination, Viktor, eyes glazed over with idealism and pride, had announced that he would do both. He would coach and skate. That was a thing people could do. It was a thing  _he_ could do.

Yuuri, later on, once they'd floated back down to earth, had told him he was biting off more than he could chew. Viktor had agreed wholeheartedly, while also refusing to back down from his choice. Yuuri had given him a look that almost certainly translated to “you're a fucking idiot,” before burrowing into bed for a much needed post-competition sleep.

The next day had been the Gala, and they had skated as a pair to Viktor's routine from last season. It was beautiful, vaguely sexy, clearly made Yurio want to vomit everywhere, and showed that across oceans and communication and cultural barriers, skating was their true, shared language. If it were possible to be any more specific than the composition already was – and Viktor was positive Yuuri had translated the lyrics for himself, months ago – he would have conveyed in the pair skate that he would completely debase himself in front of this very audience and ruin his perfectly curated reputation, if only Yuuri would let him into his world forever.

He'd said as much to Yuuri as they stood in front of the bathroom vanity before their shower, rubbing their subtle performance make up off with a very expensive cleansing balm Viktor had finally converted Yuuri to after much argument. Yuuri had pointed out that nearly a year's worth of extremely unprofessional media appearances as a coach had already ruined his perfectly curated reputation. Viktor had to concur there, but he was glad to have communicated a feeling properly for a change, regardless.

Back in the shower, Viktor was shocked that his body hadn't betrayed him by becoming visibly aroused by Yuuri's naked presence, warm and snuggly against him. It wasn't uncommon for them to sit like this, but at least in the onsen Viktor could angle himself in such a way that it wasn't obvious if his dick was acting of its own accord. Luckily, the fantasies of actually ravaging Yuuri in his family's hot spring had (mostly) disappeared, since Viktor had met too many elderly regulars of the town's one remaining onsen and now found the whole process wonderfully relaxing but quite inherently unsexy.

Viktor stroked his thumb over Yuuri's arm, which was draped lazily over his stomach. His skin was so soft.  Viktor had started using the famous Japanese exfoliating gel that Yuuri himself would use when he remembered to, but it seemed that it was a genetic thing that Viktor could never hope to attain for himself. He would have to be satisfied with touching Yuuri, and that was hardly a bad trade-off.

Despite his muddled motivations for barging into Yuuri's life to become his coach, Viktor had committed to the position very quickly and seriously. It was to the extent that, a couple of months in, he realised that he would have to put in some conscious effort to break down the idea Yuuri had of him as a coach, skater and niche-celebrity. He was sure that the progress he had made since then would probably still not hold water with say, Yakov, who would undoubtedly argue that you can, surprisingly enough, effectively coach somebody without also trying to court them. Viktor would be thankful for Yakov holding this viewpoint in regards to his much younger students. Viktor would maintain, though, that courting  _his_ skater, along with whatever other stupid, unprofessional methods he had come up with on the fly, seemed to have worked well for one hundred percent of his clients. And that was a statistic.

Viktor was no stranger to giving fake smiles to the media, to providing heavily edited versions of the truth in order to keep just enough distance between himself and the world. He knew that it had taken Yuuri all of a day to realise that Viktor wasn't actually that polite or glamourous. It had taken all of a day for Yuuri to intellectualise this, but quite a while longer to act accordingly. The final straw, funnily enough, was after their first time properly making out. They had been joking around and Viktor had licked Yuuri from his chin, up his cheek and over his eyebrow in a decidedly unglamourous fashion. Whatever fantasies Yuuri had of kissing Viktor Nikiforov prior to that, it seemed, did not involve any post-kiss silliness. That had been just after the Rostelecom Cup, and Viktor had felt, since then, that Yuuri truly saw him as the dumb, smitten loser that he was, barring moments of anxiety-driven panic where Viktor was ascended to god-status, again. They were working on it.

And they had  _so_ much time to work on it from here. After the banquet the next night, they would fly back to Hasetsu and Viktor would make quick work of packing up his life before settling Makkachin and himself into Aeroflot's finest cabin, en route to St Petersburg. He assumed that panic would settle in enough to inspire two routines made of the disjointed pieces of choreography that floated around his brain at all times. He'd skate in the Russian Nationals, and Yuuri would blow everyone away at the Japanese Nationals. Then, Yuuri would pack up his own life and meet Viktor in St Petersburg, to train with the Russians and come home together to the apartment Viktor had left behind all those months ago. 

It was going to be intense and weird and fun and draining and Viktor looked forward to every minute of it.

He was knocked out of his daydream by Yuuri adjusting his position to make Viktor's collarbone level with his lips, so that he could kiss gently into the damp skin. Lethargic from the steam and from his muscles working earlier on in the evening, Viktor sighed in contentment and ran a hand down Yuuri's waist and hips, before settling on an irresistibly toned thigh. 

Time may be a figure skating's natural enemy, but as far as he was concerned, with Yuuri, he had all the time in the world.

 


	2. Yuuri

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kind of knew a Yuuri chapter would eventually push its way into my brain, and here it is in its scattered glory. It is scattered, in part due to my lack of skill, but also because I have a St Petersburg fic in mind and I am ready to do it but I know this has to leave my system first.
> 
> Enjoy the snoozy Yuuri thoughts.

They had bathed together in his family's onsen nearly every day for eight months. On these occasions, Yuuri had been stretched into positions the onsen had likely never seen before, all in the name of skating glory and recuperation. He had been quizzed on his knowledge of astronomy, provoked by the constellations made stunningly visible by Viktor switching off all the lighting around the pool. He'd been kissed everywhere that wasn't hidden beneath the water. All this, and the onsen had, somehow, managed to retain its innocence as a family space, despite becoming their unofficial spot for soul-searching and extremely mild debauchery. It pushed the intimacy down, down, and replaced it with the safety of cultural familiarity.

Showering together felt completely different and Yuuri wasn't sure whether the context called for philosophical conversation or not. He hoped not; he was way too exhausted to consider discussing whether free will was really a thing.

Yuuri felt a hand slip into his hair, felt the resistance caused by dampness-formed clumpy locks. Viktor evidently didn't mind. He couldn't slide his fingers through like he usually would, so he just changed tactics by way of a gentle scalp massage. They hadn't spoken since Viktor had informed Yuuri that they were going to sit on the floor. Maybe he was trying to recreate the comfort of the onsen, Yuuri thought.

Both of them were sitting with their legs outstretched. The shower was just long enough that Yuuri's feet didn't touch the glass screen. Viktor's toes brushed against it, feet crossed at the ankles, and Yuuri noticed the small sprinkling of new blisters along the edges of the rough soles he'd once assumed were immune from such mortal concerns. The pair skate had required Viktor to give more in the last couple of months than the rest of his stay in Hasetsu combined. The feet of a seasoned figure skater would always look a bit busted, but his had been given a well-deserved rest for six months only to be thrown back into unforgiving training as Viktor learned to lift and swing an unassumingly solid Yuuri.

Yakov had nearly had an stroke when he saw the exhibition skate. When the pair exited the ice, he had made it known - in English so that Yuuri could understand it too - that if he saw Viktor throwing Yuuri around like that in Saint Petersburg there would be very unpleasant consequences.

Viktor had laughed it off and pulled Yuuri into a hug that lifted him off the floor slightly, as if to ask Yakov, “Are you _sure_ you want me to come back?”

Yuuri spent a few minutes worrying about the state of Viktor's spine before reminding himself that he had been trying to not feel guilty over things Viktor did of his own accord. It was going _okay_. It was a work in progress.

It was overwhelming when Yuuri truly allowed himself to consider the fact that he was going to be moving to Russia within the month. But, Yakov mentioning the pair's future in Saint Petersburg so casually as he had was comforting in a sense, as if the whole world knew before Yuuri did that Viktor wasn't going to go anywhere unless Yuuri came with him. Conversations about this move, though, had so far been limited to discussions of how to coordinate the next few weeks around their respective national competitions, and how Yuuri would need to get some warmer socks. Yuuri's mind had supplied him with a list of things to bring up later. He had so many things to ask about, and he figured that he would start along the lines of rink schedules and work his way to up to the query of just how many cups WADA has all of Russia's athletes peeing into these days.

It had always seemed rude to bring up Viktor's country in relation to doping scandals but it felt pertinent now.

Still, despite the quiet support of everybody around him, and Viktor continuing to humanise himself by doing things like singing along to the noise his phone made when he plugged in the charger, or crying when Yuuri had mentioned his decision to retire, he still occasionally had to remind himself that Viktor wasn't actually untouchable. Because, really, how untouchable _is_ someone when the entire right side of your damp body is sealed up against theirs? That wasn't exactly new, but without the relative modesty usually afforded by steam and water from the ribs down, it felt different. He was able to see his own arm draped over Viktor's stomach, mere inches from the narrow trail of coarse hair that led south. It brought to mind in a very vivid way the response Yuuri knew Viktor's body could have to him – _had_ had to him – that Yuuri thus far hadn't had the guts to do anything about.

Yuuri knew that the majority of the skaters and personnel who cared to consider it, assumed that he and Viktor were sleeping together – that they had been since China, probably. At first, the thought had terrified him. Not so much about the presumed-sex itself. At the time, that had seemed laughable. The initial fear that people would assume Viktor had sunk so low, both socially and ethically, however, faded as Yuuri discovered that this assumption had, at least, allowed him to feel more believable in his Eros routine. Dime-a-dozen Japanese skater Katsuki Yuuri leading Viktor Nikiforov down a road of personal and professional doom by way of pure sex appeal? Only the most masterful seduction could lure such a practiced playboy away from Mother Russia!

The realisation that Viktor's daily affection was because Yuuri was legitimately appealing to him came gradually, and quite a bit later. If it didn't hurt his Eros, it had definitely strengthened his free skate.

Nobody _needed_ to know the reality of the situation, which was that despite the kisses they'd shared, they'd yet to do much else. The most passionate exchange he'd experienced in bed was when he had tried to steal his laptop back from Viktor, who'd been trying to pay for the rather splurgey online Uniqlo order Yuuri was in the midst of making. Yuuri was considering awarding the handjob from a week ago the superlative, but even Viktor would probably agree that trying to pay for things for Yuuri was a lesson in passionate exchange that rivalled that of an orgasm, though much less enjoyable.

Viktor's hand slipped down from Yuuri's scalp and brushed along the back of his neck before settling so that Yuuri was cuddled closely, secured by the soft touch of fingers stroking his bicep. Everywhere that their skin touched felt hot and intimate and it made Yuuri want to crawl into Viktor's lap, to melt into him from every angle. It would have been a very bold move from him indeed, and he couldn't quite bring himself to do it. Instead, he twisted a bit more and elevated himself by scooting his feet underneath him. Faced with Viktor's collarbone, he acted on instinct and pressed his lips into the damp skin.

The sudden hitch in Viktor's breathing was very rewarding indeed. Rewarding and a bit exciting, Yuuri admitted to himself, as Viktor's hand traced a path down his waist and onto his thigh. The feeling of that hand curled around so that the thumb brushed over the innermost surface of available skin felt as intimate as anything else they'd done.

Yuuri desperately wanted Viktor to say something. He didn't want to be the one to break the silence himself in case that wasn't something one was meant to do in this situation. He had zero frame of reference, but he knew Viktor would never do anything without being prompted, so they were at a very frustrating stalemate.

Against his leg, he could feel Viktor's ring, a metallic contrast to the soft pads of fingers gently stroking over his skin. Yuuri had never given much thought to engagement or marriage, and would admit to a temporary lapse in judgment when it came to purchasing symbolic items for the two of them. His cluelessness didn't take away from what they meant, but he wasn't sure how to phrase what exactly _that_ was. He knew he wanted forever. He knew on some level that Viktor was offering it, with or without rings and matrimony. He knew it meant they would follow each other anywhere the other needed to go. For the moment, that was enough for him.

Yuuri threaded his fingers through Viktor's. He knew if he made the suggestions towards sex that he was tempted to make, Viktor would release months of tension into making sure Yuuri had a good time. That sounded pretty nice, actually. Yuuri wondered if he could stay awake during it, and quickly concluded that the odds were low on that.

“What's on your mind, Yuuri?” murmured Viktor.

Yuuri could feel the words vibrate through his body. He breathed in, then out. He wondered, unhelpfully, how many of the other finalists were considering sex with their coaches at this moment in time. That was a pointless and creepy thought. He wondered how many times, since they sat down in the shower, Viktor had thought about touching him. That was a nicer, more relevant thought.

“I'm so sleepy right now,” Yuuri said, punctuated by a well-timed yawn. “But, um,” he stopped for a moment and tried to formulate his invite. “If I wake up in a few hours and start kissing you, would you, um,” he continued, wondering if anyone had ever propositioned someone so poorly whilst in a shower. “Be interested in... sex?”

Viktor squeezed his hand and Yuuri felt a smile against his hair. “My Yuuri,” Viktor replied, “You could wake me up tonight to tell me Makkachin has learned to talk and it would still be less exciting than you asking for sex.”

The idea of a talking poodle was actually quite awful to Yuuri, but he trusted Viktor when he said it would excite him, because of course it would.

“Good to know,” Yuuri said quietly, before allowing himself to sink into Viktor's cuddle. “Can we go to bed, then?”

“That is the new second best idea. Talking Makkachin is now third."

"No," Yuuri replied, smiling at Viktor who had made provisional movements to get up. "Talking Makkachin is at least fourth. Third is you moving me from here to bed because I'm tired."

"Yakov would definitely not approve of that," Viktor said, but moved Yuuri upright so that they were kneeling face to face anyway, before hauling them both to their feet. "Don't you have any respect for my poor spine?"

"I do, but I'm exhausted."

Yuuri felt a sudden chill as Viktor turned off the shower. "I'm tired too," Viktor said, tapping Yuuri on the nose. "You're not the only one who needs to recharge before anything fun happens."

Toothbrushes and warm towels followed in a blur, and Yuuri could barely register how he managed amidst all his fatigue. Viktor wasn't lying when he'd said he was tired - Yuuri could already feel steady, minty breaths tickling his lips. Yuuri gave the sleeping Viktor the softest of kisses, and took a moment to appreciate all his current comforts, from the arms around him, to the fact that the only alarm on Viktor's phone was set to midday, just in case.

Yuuri knew there was no real expectation that he would wake up in the middle of the night with the energy and desire to navigate sex. Viktor would never presume, or push. Yuuri considered setting an alarm for 3 am. That would probably ruin the mood though, right? Maybe he'd just try in the morning. That seemed more sensible.

Yuuri barely completed that thought before he felt the foggy pull of sleep. He accepted its lure, and succumbed with pleasure.


End file.
